The Feed

by Nick Clark Windo

  [dariancharles] the news is that PresidentTaylor1 has been killed. Everything goes quiet. All FeedIDs are stilled. President Taylor1 has been killed. It fractals across theFeed, then mutates to say assassinated. Already there’s chaos in the U.S., contagious panic, the economy has flatlined & weapons have been mobilized toward the east. My cortisol levels are up 18.2%, my heartrate beating 2.93times too fast, & there are now 100,000s of thisvid & as fast as 1pool is dammed, 2,000others appear, & I’m looking up what’s the difference between murder & assassination & Mum is still shouting but she’s drowned out by the roar & it’s something to do with the word hash, which is an archaic term for C21H30O2, & I access one of the newspools & what’s there, the thing that everyone’s absorbing, that’s at the center of all these newspools coming repeatedly and unstoppably into existence, is a vid tagged [RichardDrake62SeniorSecurityAnalystWH.USA.StaffFID#22886284912] and time-stamped 7.23secs ago. I go into his memory bundle. I have no idea where this room is because the GPSloc is blocked, but it looks like every special-ops room from any ent I’ve ever gulped. A lacquered table reflects cold-buzzing neons. Thinscreens & decks adorn the soundproofed walls. Then PresidentTaylor1 walks in with a creamsweater (the new line from [Muitton], an ident links me) slung across his shoulders, a big mug of dark and fragrant coffee (the [arabeanica] blend from [Nesspro], an ident links me) in one hand, & this is the WhiteHouseUSA, this was the WhiteHouseUSA 7.34secs ago, & this mundle getting out is an insane security breach, no wonder pools are being dammed, &—

  —Good morning all, PresidentTaylor1 says in thereal with that warm-gruff tone, and sits. I understand, he says, given Energen’s surprising news, that the race is now on for the Arctic South. We will not let it fall into the wrong hands. Folks, we have war in a cold climate. But before the president’s smile can fully form, RichardDrake62’s view is obscured as a silhouetted figure—PatrickVaughn59, it’s tagged—stands & raises a gun. The president’s head becomes a cloud of red. The room upturns as RichardDrake62 dives for cover & RichardDrake62’s mundle crashes to black & there’s the sounds of upheaval & someone screams something that sounds like “Dariancharles!” & right away [dariancharles] is spurting off into thousands of pools saying [whoisdariancharles?] & then the vid repeats—repeats—repeats.

  I search again for a laterlink because that mundle is cutshort & there it is: Kate/I resprayed it the followingday. After the silhouette stands & PresidentTaylor1 is shot there is a turmoil, a chaos

  in the room. The gunman is thrown to the ground &—here, now—he shouts, Darian Charles! I hear him. I hear him shout his name. It’s him, it’s my son, I’ve found him! He shouts again, his voice breaking, Darian Char—& a gunshot silences him. 2, 3, 4 shots & no one speaks until people shout. For medics, for help, but not for Darian, my boy—they’re running to help the president. To help PresidentTaylor1. Him. Who helped humanity ravage the planet & leave it burned & dead. & us. & me. & my children, damned to never have children of their own. These people! These animals! These stupid, careless animals! They abandon Darian, leave him on the ground, & run for the president as—

  I stop the mundle, I pull out of KateHatfield1, &—

  Sylene kneels above him, in silence, for hours. It is a place of stillness, a place of total loss. As it gets dark outside, Tom stirs.

  Sylene dips back briefly into the Feed. She riffles through Kate’s BackUp states. She has time, now, to do this. She searches her SaveYou files. She travels through their lives. She unpicks things and savors them. When they met, where they lived, their secrets and their fears. Their arguments. She feels it all. Both of them. She understands them. She sees that Tom told her no lies. She looks at everything. She experiences it all. The sort of life she was never allowed. The joy. The fullness of it, of everything they had. Of all they took for granted.

  With a very simple impulse, she could reset.

  She could allow Kate to live again.

  It’s there, in her brain, like an itch.

  But Darian. Killed on the other side of the world just six short years ago—six tiny, tiny years, a pathetic fraction of the time they had both traveled back through the absolute cold of the void, as thoughts without form, the hell of it all, the torturous hell of that!

  She has found him, as she’d promised him she would, if only he said his name.

  She told him to do something noticeable, and he definitely managed that.

  She feels pride among a mixture of things. The overwhelming urge to protect. Fierce familial love, Kate’s memories of Bea burning still, acid-hot, through her veins. This baby she has been carrying, growing, and the fiery heat of self-preservation kicking in. Fear as the Feed went down. Hatred and despair. President Taylor. That disgusting man. If only he’d stopped this when he could have. He could easily have prevented it all. No one needed to die. But Taylor’s death had set off so much. The devastation of the world. And she’d told her son to do it.

  Tom groans.

  She turns her connection to the homeHub off and feels the Feed echo away. Her mind is quiet again.

  Tom breathes heavily beneath her. His face, this still, looks peaceful. Wounded. She would fight to protect him in this wonderful, wonderful world. But Kate would too, she knows.

  She turns her Feed back on.

  The option to reset, to forget everything she’s lost and to feel blissful nothing. Or the option to have it all. The knowledge and the loss.

  “Kate?” Tom whispers beneath her.

  Six Years Later

  Kate

  Forgive and Forget

  The memories of those early days are packed away like hazardous waste, as if my mind doesn’t want me to touch them. I certainly don’t want to talk of them, of what we had to do—to Tom, to anyone at all. The first days were the hardest, let’s just say that, but the rest were incredibly hard as well. It toughens you up, this life. I broke into a house and we stayed there. Tom was addled and confused. I wasn’t much better. The grief. His speech was stunted, his thought processes pained. He spent days in a wallowing daze. The weeks. The time it took us to travel. I knew where we were going, but I was so unclear how to get there. But we found the camp in time. I gave birth. A girl, and she looked just as I’d imagined. I suggested we call her Beatrice. His mind was still sporadic, but from that scrambled state he learned. We both did. We learned new lives. I told him everything he needed to know. Nearly two years later, I became pregnant again. A boy. Daniel seemed to fit; I thought really hard about that name. We made a family. We made our lives. We made a world that works and is fine. From when we got down from the tower to six years later, all that work, all that time, to now.

  We go walking, Danny and me, in the hour we have before dinner. That lovely slow time of day. We brush the pig feed from our hands and run through the camp, pretending to be birds.

  Once past the forge, past the buildings, with their oiled-paper windows and freshly limed walls, we race up one of the furrows and look for worms in the field. Danny loves worms. He’s fascinated by how they move. I took them for granted until he showed me one, and now I could watch them writhe for days. Kids point out the taken-for-granted in things. That’s what they’re here to do, and we have a duty to listen.

  Outside the camp’s gates, we take the little track through the woods, and Danny trots by my heels as he chatters. I’ve promised him a honey lick if he can catch a pigeon, and he falls for it every time, trying every approach he knows: the casual stalk, the stealth attack, the all-out run, arms flailing. He’s never caught one yet, but it tires him out before bed.

  The heat is coming off the day. Early-summer plants sway and insects curve around them. As we reach the slope, Danny becomes tired. He’s only four, and though his body hints at an athletic build, he doesn’t want to climb. He arches up at me and raises his arms.

  “Mummy-y-y-y-y?” He droops and whines.

  His whole hands fit inside my palms as I twist him onto my shoulders. They are dirty, rough, and smelly from feeding the animals,
I realize, as they grasp my face. We should have washed them clean. Dirt is dangerous in a world like this. But then so are many things, and we can’t be protected from them all—we need some hardness to survive. Halfway through the woods the railway line still cuts a path, and Danny asks to be let down. He lies lengthways on the thickly crusted tracks, hugging them, his mouth lolling in glee. He loves the way they smell. He loves the way they stay warm. He loves the way they’re buried in plants, secret, deep, and hidden.

  “Why are they so hot, Mummy?”

  “Because they’re made of metal.”

  “Why is metal hot?”

  I admire my son, hugging the track. How does he know to ask these things?

  “D’you think we’ll see a train, Mummy? One that’s still alive?” The boy’s head cranes to look along the tracks.

  “They’re all extinct,” I tell him. “There are no more left at all.”

  Danny stands up. He sighs and kicks the track with a tiny foot. “Stupid thing.”

  I reach out my hand and he takes it.

  “Do we have to go up the hill?”

  “Yes, we do.”

  “Why?”

  “Because your daddy has something to show you.”

  “Is it a witch?”

  “No.”

  “A troll?”

  “Come on, Danny. It’s not far now.”

  The boy’s face contorts as his shoulders hunch and droop, and in that moment he looks like Tom. Tom when he’s tired. Tom when he’s required to do something he doesn’t want to do. Tom as I led him from the tower, from the city, six years ago, ever-increasingly pregnant. Bury those memories away.

  I lift Danny up again; laughing at him would make it worse. “Keep your legs tight, then. And give me your hands.”

  I trudge up the rolls that ripple toward the summit, and near the top, we turn. Danny stretches his arms out as we spin around in the breeze. He sees the camp below and kicks and shouts and waves.

  “Woo-hoo! Clai-aire! Ste-eee-eve! I’m up hee-re! Look at me! I’m flying!”

  But they don’t hear him, Claire and Steve. The height and the breeze take Danny’s words away, so we turn and head for the top, where Danny sees the others. He gasps and claps and pulls my hair with excitement. “Daddy and Beaty-Bea!” He scrabbles to get down, runs to them, and jumps up into Tom’s arms. Then he leaps down and wrestles with his sister.

  Tom disentangles the children and smiles as I approach. His hair is graying now, and his skin is leathered from working outdoors. But mine is too, I know, my brow as furrowed as the fields. My own hair is going gray, this body getting old. Even that climb was exhausting.

  But at the same time, while of course we’re getting older, I love how slowly time goes.

  “Hello, you.” I take his hand and lean on him to get my breath. “Does it work?”

  “I don’t know, I was waiting for you.”

  He grins like a child. A wide scar scores his forehead. His hands and arms are covered in them too, from when we left the city. I told him all he needed to know, like Jane did for Graham, because I saw how he fought for me, what he did to keep me safe; he wears his scars only on the outside now, I’ve made sure of that.

  “Let’s see. Hey, you two,” he yells at the wrestling-again children. “Come here now!”

  He slings the knapsack off his back as Danny and Bea dash over. Bea is nearly six now. Her birthday is in a week. She stands there patiently, looking up at Tom, interest glowing in her eyes. It’s like a living thing. She’s a thoughtful girl and more considerate than her brother, who pushes her aside to grab for the thing that Tom pulls out.

  “What is that?” Danny asks, his eyes goggling.

  “Be—very—careful,” Tom says.

  “What is it?” Danny whispers, which makes his sister laugh, a light and glorious sound, which in turn makes Danny scowl.

  Action: reaction—it’s how the world works.

  “We can’t remember what they were called in the past,” Tom interrupts to distract their bickering. “But do you know what it’s made of?” He points at the tightly stitched hide and, in response to their vacant expressions, explains, “It’s leather.”

  “Can I hold it now, Daddy?”

  “Wait, Danny. Be patient. What’s this, Bea?”

  Tom flips the thing around and points at the clear globes held tightly at each end. The leather has been stitched, like a collar, around them. Bea’s fingers tap them, stroke them. Her skin judders across their surface and she raises her hands to her mouth in thought. “Stone!”

  “No.”

  “Metal?”

  “Nope.”

  “This game is silly,” Danny interrupts.

  “They’re glass, kids. Come on, try it.”

  The children attempt the word—“G-lass”—but Danny’s interest is waning.

  “Look!” Tom puts the thing quickly to his eye and then gives it to Danny, who stands on my foot while leaning against my legs and raises the tube to his face.

  “I don’t get it . . .”

  “Close this eye,” I tell him, smiling at Tom and leaning down to touch Danny’s face. “No, this one. This one, Danny. That’s right. And look through here. Here. Now, what do you see?”

  The boy is silent. Then: “Eh?” he says, and “Wow!” He wriggles, looking around at things. If I wasn’t supporting him, he’d fall over. “Is it magic?”

  “No, it’s not magic. It’s science your dad made.”

  “Is that looking into the future?”

  “No.” I laugh at the thought. “It’s what’s here now, just farther away. Can I?”

  Tom nods. He’s pleased with it.

  I ignore Danny’s huff and raise the thing to my eye. It’s defective. Most of the view is warped and unclear. But a small part at the center is perfect. The world whips past as I pull the thing around, swollen in the orb—the green of the leaves, the furrowed fields, the tall wooden walls circling the camp. Those ridiculous painted flowers. The skeletons of the train cars that had been at its center when we first came here have now virtually disappeared: over the years, all of their metal has been used, stripped and flayed away. The forge pumps smoke into the sky. Claire and Steve have been vital in making this work.

  “Well done, you,” I say, and Tom beams at my words.

  Again, action: reaction. The world is shaped like this.

  His voice is excited. “I think if we make it smaller we can get the glass more precise.”

  “And maybe something other than leather?” I suggest. “It feels like it’s bending.”

  “Steve doesn’t think we can make a metal tube small enough, but time will tell on that!”

  “It’s good,” I reassure him. “I’m very proud.”

  I rest a hand on his chest and pat it. The children have run away and are playing in the grass. Rather, Danny is trying to wrestle with his sister while Bea persistently explains something to him. Something about the land, something about the earth and the way things work, it seems from the way she’s pointing. But Danny is restless and bored. It’s nearly time for food.

  I admire the view over their heads. There is a deep silence to the world. A weight, a strength, a peace. Birds are flying in the distance. I am here, and that is it, the wind blowing through my hair. It seems we humans are in balance once more. Our power is simply our own. Without buttons to press, or weapons to unleash, each person’s effect is just that. We have refound our humility. This view is huge. I can’t affect it at all. And it’s a tiny proportion of the planet. All I can hope to control is my little area. Here. The vastness of the world disconnects everything but a few strong relationships. We mustn’t overreach ourselves. So we make the thinnest veneer of security through all the work we do. We hope it will hold back the dangers. The space we create, that we forge with our lives—that’s what we have to protect. We work hard for such an inconsequential space, but it is absolutely everything to us.

  Bea and Danny are still arguing. Tom’s looki
ng around at me. They all want to start the walk home. What little we have here thrums alive with the greatest possible value.

  “We were lucky to find this place.” Tom takes my hand. “We were so, so lucky to find it.”

  I smile. We were lucky. But I knew it was here. It wasn’t chance. In an uncaring world you must make things work for yourself. It’s all about advantage, this fight for preservation. If you don’t take it when you can, who will? It will be taken. I squeeze his hand. “Claire wants a camp meeting after dinner, so we better not be late. And Steve says the forge needs some repair work done.”

  “Doesn’t it feel like we’re nearly there?” Tom says, and puts his arm around me. “That somehow we’ve nearly made it?”

  “It does. This is close enough to perfect.”

  “We’ve got to protect it, Kate,” he says, and strokes the back of my neck.

  “Yes,” I agree. “We do.”

  In the distance, the dull blur of an old city lies halfway across the plain. Below us is all that matters: small buildings and fields, and the smoke from the forge, and, closer, our son and daughter. The future of this world. Playing in the grass. Beatrice Sylene and Daniel Darian. Our children. Our future. Our all.

  I take Tom’s hand and we start down the hill toward camp. Tom thought their middle names were strange when I gave them. But it’s how we’ll be remembered.

  Acknowledgments

  Many people have influenced this novel. Writers, musicians, filmmakers, family, friends, and others—you might notice these bits, you might not. You might not ever even read The Feed or know you influenced it. In any case, I’m very grateful.